Hundreds of children have died in feeding centers across Somalia, a day after the global organization warned that parts of Somalia would face famine in the coming months, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.
The Horn of Africa region is on track for its fifth consecutive season of low precipitation. The 2011 famine in Somalia claimed more than 250,000 lives, most of them children.
“About 730 children died in food and nutrition centers across the country between January and July this year, but the figures may be higher as not many deaths have been reported,” UNICEF’s Somali representative Wafaa Saeed said at a press conference in Geneva.
The centers are for children with severe acute malnutrition as well as other complications such as measles, cholera or malaria, and are considered just a snapshot of the situation across the country.
“We don’t know the full picture,” said Victor Chinyama, Unicef’s spokesperson in Mogadishu.
UNICEF said outbreaks of the disease have increased among children, with nearly 13,000 suspected cases of measles reported in recent months, with 78% of these being children under the age of five.
source: Noticias
